


nocturnes

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Generation Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Intimacy, Jyn Erso Lives, Kissing, Nightmares, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 16:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16162952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Jyn would shield her if she could. More than that, she would have freed her from the burden entirely. She knew better than most the cost of heroics. And she didn’t want that for Rey if she could help it.





	nocturnes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



From the start, Jyn had watched Rey. It was hard not to. She shone in the Force and though Jyn didn’t have it herself, she knew from experience that even those without Force-sensitivity could know things. Jyn might not have been a Jedi, but she’d lived long enough to know the truth of what Chirrut had once tried to teach them all. Rey was a force of nature; she was a reckoning that would come to all who opposed her.

Some of the people Jyn’s age, the ones who would follow Leia Organa into hell and back, they saw her as a second coming against the darkness, Luke Skywalker reborn now that he’d finally proved himself a flawed man, a hero, but different than they all expected him to be. She wanted to shake them, to make them see sense. Rey was every bit as human as Luke. She deserved better than to be put on a pedestal, alone.

It wasn’t her job to carry the weight of so many people’s hopes on her shoulders just because she knew a few more parlor tricks than the rest of them. They’d learned nothing from their experiences during the Rebellion. And Rey would likely suffer for it the way Luke did, the way Leia did.

Jyn would shield her if she could. More than that, she would have freed her from the burden entirely. She knew better than most the cost of heroics. And she didn’t want that for Rey if she could help it.

Jyn watched Rey now, deep in sleep, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth pinched. She often dreamed of horrible things, of failures and death and all the ways this could all go wrong, that the First Order could win. The odds were stacked against them always and Jyn didn’t lie to Rey about that, couldn’t even if she wanted to. She’d never been a very good liar and she hadn’t grown any better in the years she’d been alive.

“Rey,” she said, voice rough with sleep, but as soothing as she knew how to be. Her hand curved around Rey’s shoulder and dug into the soft skin of her back. She was incredibly aware of the callouses she carried and the way they caught on every surface known to man and considered not waking Rey from her troubled dreams just to save Rey from this small discomfort, too.

After all, how much worse could her dreams be than the reality? They existed on a shoestring, scrambled and fought and bled and died for every inch and even by those scant measures the First Order took and took from them.

Already it was too late, because Rey’s brown eyes opened and found hers. Despite the shadow Jyn cast, Jyn saw warmth there and the smile Rey gave her threatened to pull the breath from her lungs. “Again?” she asked, this song an old, well-worn one. Seemingly unperturbed, she stretched and wrapped her hand around Jyn’s wrist, pulling it to her mouth so that she might press a kiss to Jyn’s pulse point. “Maybe I should start sleeping in my own quarters. Give you a chance for a full night’s rest.”

Jyn was a grown woman. It was ridiculous that her stomach should flutter as such attentions. And yet, here they were, insides twisting up at Rey’s generosity, her sweetness, things she shared with everyone, but most especially with Jyn, who could be more prickly on her best days then Rey was on her worst. “Don’t you dare,” Jyn answered, more serious than Rey probably needed her to be. She knew Rey was teasing mostly, but she never wanted Rey to believe she wanted to send her elsewhere.

Jyn had spent too much of her life shutting people out. And Rey had been well on her way to doing the same when they first met. She was just better at hiding it than Jyn was. Again, she was so much kinder than Jyn could be and occasionally let people past her defenses. Jyn, a case in point. But even so. Even so, Jyn knew.

This life could be a tragic one. And Rey had suffered so much already. They all had. But Rey cared so much. Felt so deeply. That would burn her, if she let it.

Rey’s fingers, equally calloused, brushed across Jyn’s lower lip before she pulled Jyn into a kiss. “Okay,” she said against Jyn’s mouth, the words softer somehow than her touch. Her thumbs skimmed across the skin under Jyn’s eyes as she cupped Jyn’s cheeks. “I’ll just wake you every night, shall I, until your eyes are bruised and bloodshot?”

“If that’s the cost,” Jyn said, “I’ll gladly pay it.”

Rey laughed and pressed another kiss against Jyn’s mouth. “You’re ridiculous.”

Humming, Jyn pressed herself against Rey, harbored not a single doubt that Rey could bear her weight. Her body was taut beneath Jyn’s, muscled and only growing more so by the day. She defined herself by the plains of her body. The more conditioned it was, the better prepared she was. And Jyn reaped the benefit of that as she pushed Rey’s tank top up her abdomen.

Rey’s hands covered hers and the smile dropped from her mouth. “It was just a dream. Nothing—nothing that matters so very much.”

Sometimes, it broke Jyn’s heart that Rey was so happy to cast aside comfort, like it was nothing worth holding onto and keeping. She’d learned the value of hauling scrap across the desert on Jakku, but she’d never learned this. “I care about you,” she said into Rey’s neck because it was so much harder to say it to her face. “It matters to me.”

Her fingers pressed against the swell of Rey’s breasts. She arched, lazy, into Jyn’s hands, familiar and comforting. She spoke into the crown of Jyn’s hair. “Maybe I should have bad dreams more often.”

It was a joke, so very clearly a joke, but Jyn couldn’t hide the truth from herself.

She had bad dreams almost every night already. And Jyn didn’t know how to stop them as it was.

But she could at least do this, have this, share this with Rey.

It wouldn’t take the dreams away, but Jyn hoped…

She hoped it eased the images that haunted Rey’s subconscious.

This was, it sometimes felt like, the only thing Jyn could do.


End file.
